In the past few weeks it seems that not a day has gone by without the same harrowing subject hitting the front page of most national newspapers. It's like a recurring nightmare. "Mother throws herself in front of lorry days after having twins", "Seven young teenagers found hanged within weeks of each other in Bridgend", "Tragedy of the woman who blamed herself for being raped". All of these cases are very different and yet have one common denominator: all those involved took their own lives.
As you get older, you discover how precious life is. When you have a child, you see the gift of life in its most basic form. As a parent, and in particular, as a mother, having carried the child for nine months, this gift is something that you nurture and treasure for ever, never thinking in your wildest dreams that this precious thing could be taken away from you. You do your best to keep the child safe and warm - you love unconditionally and thank God you get the same in return.
But sometimes things do not go according to your life plan. Out of the blue, like a lightning strike, suddenly your child leaves you. Just like that. Paf. Everything you had ever believed in seems to disappear in a split second. One minute they were there, talking to you, smiling - the next they are gone. For ever. And it was their choice. No time to say goodbye. Nothing. Just gone. Gone where? Why? Why us? What's happening? Tell me this isn't true? Please tell me this isn't happening . . . Help, please God, help us! This is how it feels when a child commits suicide. I know because it happened to us just over a year ago. Our beautiful, strong, funny, loving, loyal, thoughtful 21-year-old son James suddenly, one cold December evening, decided to leave us. He loved us so much, and knew how much he was loved, but that was not enough to keep him here that night.
It was as if a large hand came down and took him away, and there was nothing we could do to keep him from going. There were no warning signs to speak of. He was not a drug user or an alcoholic. He had no history of mental illness or depression. He did not lock himself in his room for days on end. On the contrary, he was like an open book. Warm, sensitive, without secrets. Or so we thought.
Ten days before James died, he had a small operation to correct a varicocele on one of his testicles. It was a minor operation but due to the nature of where it was, he was understandably anxious. After the operation he went straight back to Newcastle University where he was studying, assuring me he felt fine, and turning down offers of TLC at home.
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We talked frequently during that time, as I know he also did with his father. We tried our best to reassure him that it would take a bit of time for things to get back to normal. That anaesthetics can make you feel a bit down. That we could go back and see the surgeon any time if he felt worried.
What we did not know was that he had got himself into a state of extreme anxiety and was quietly convincing himself, totally irrationally, that the operation had been a disaster. We were unaware, until after his death, that he had gone to an NHS walk-in clinic in Newcastle stating his anxiety and suicidal feelings about the operation and that they had fobbed him off to A&E as a priority 4, which is on a par with having a bad toothache.
We did not know that he was searching websites at three in the morning asking for information on varicocelectomy procedures, or that he was calling the surgeon constantly to get reassurance, but getting nowhere.
The last 24 hours of James's life were spent at home with his family who were the centre of his existence, surrounded by both sets of parents, brothers and sisters, cousins and uncles. He was subdued and I was keeping an eye on him. I had rung our GP with my concerns, but had no idea what was about to unfold. You don't go there, do you? You don't think, "Is he about to kill himself?" Something so dark, so horrendous just doesn't enter your mind.
And then it happened, and our world fell apart. The rest is history. The past year, a living hell. Each day, a living nightmare. And so it continues, trying to be normal, yet feeling detached in a bubble, going through the motions. Not really knowing which day of the week it is any more. It doesn't really matter anyway. Feeling like a failure - I was his mother, I should have saved him.
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I will never know what exactly tipped him over the edge. I know the operation was clearly troubling him, but it was solvable. With time it would be all right. But something made him believe he had to go - there was an urgency as if this was the only way to escape from this torment in his head that fateful night.
I remember trying to convince myself it had been an accident. I just could not tolerate the thought that my boy had done what he had done. It was heinous. I swung between rage and utter desperation. I had a pain in my heart so intense, I thought it would explode. I could find no peace, no solace and at night I clung onto his childhood toy, a raccoon, and Crystal Palace scarf as if I was clinging on for dear life.
But out of this chaos has to come survival. There are other children to think of and love. There are grandparents who are suffering too, cousins who miss him dearly, friends who keep in touch. You feel you can't fall to pieces. So what to do to survive? With the help of friends and loved ones, you start to walk again, slowly. You meet other mothers who have been through similar situations and they give you immense strength. They are gentle, gracious, kind and their tragedy makes you feel vaguely normal again.
And when you hear of other people's suffering, you want to reach out and help them. You want to hold their hand through the terror and disbelief that suicide leaves in its wake. You want to understand more, and slowly you discover that this "disease" is not so rare after all. That suicide is the highest killer of young men in this country.
But why didn't we know this? Yes, suicide has a stigma to it - a car accident is much easier to comprehend, perhaps, but it is suicide that is killing more young men every year than car accidents, so surely something has to be done to stop this. Now.
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So we, James's father Nick, and I, have set up a fund, the James Wentworth-Stanley Memorial Fund, primarily aimed to raise awareness of these harsh, raw facts and to try to prevent this terrible statistic from getting any worse. This involves making parents aware of the danger signals; working to ban the evil websites that encourage taking your own life; urging schools to talk openly about depression/suicide just as they do in lectures on sex or drugs; making helplines easily accessible and available to young people in distress; campaigning for reforms in the health service so that patients who are mentally ill are treated with the same urgency and respect as those with physical illness; and generally removing the taboo attached to mental illness. We feel strongly that, after what we have been through, no family is immune to this problem.
Suicidal thoughts put into action are either fatal or near fatal. There is no grey area. If, as a young man or woman, you walk into a hospital saying you feel suicidal, this should be viewed as a life-threatening condition. You should not be asked to join a queue for four hours in A&E. To admit to feeling that down, you are clearly distressed and at the end of your tether. You need help then and there.
For us as parents, anything that can be achieved to prevent other families going through what we have been through will be a huge positive. When I piece together the jigsaw of James's last few days, there were moments when, if only the right person had been informed, his life could have taken a very different turn. If only this, if only that. Words that go around and around my head like a Catherine wheel, day in, day out.
Recently I was in Argentina talking to a mother who had lost her daughter, aged three, to meningitis. We compared our grief and our loss, but when I referred to James's death I kept saying: "Why? Why?" She turned to me quietly and said: "Clare, you must stop asking 'Porque?' [Why?] Instead, you must ask, 'Para que?' [For what?]" Maybe now we have the answer.
A fitting memorial
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Until her son's suicide, Clare Milford Haven seemed to live a charmed life. Married to the Marquess of Milford Haven, she had just finished an eight-year stint as social editor of Tatler and was looking forward to spending more time at home with her family. From her first marriage to Nick Wentworth-Stanley she had three children: James, 21, Harry, now 18, and Louisa, now 14. On December 15, 2006, at the Wentworth-Stanley home in Worcestershire, where the family had gathered before Christmas, James shot himself. Eight hundred people attended his memorial. His parents are setting up a foundation to tackle the high incidence of suicide in young Britons. Donations, please, to: The James Wentworth-Stanley Memorial Fund, c/o Withers (Solicitors), 16 Old Bailey, London EC4M 7EG. See www.jwsmf.org